Research On Absorptive Capacity Of Information Technology From A Process Perspective

With rapid development of information technology (IT) and further penetration of information system (IS) construction, more and more enterprises have realized the strategic value of information technology and made great investment in it. However, the viewpoint that information technology can directly bring competitive advantage has suffered challenges from more and more researchers who proposed the argument of"IT productivity paradox". Many studies argued that, the cause of"black hole of IT investment"lies in that information technology is not absorbed and applied effectively by the enterprise after it is adopted, that is,"assimilation gaps"exists in many enterprises. Existing literature generally pays attention to the influential factors before adoption while neglects the problems of how information technology can be accepted and assimilated by the organization after it is adopted. However, only it is absorbed and applied by the enterprise can information technology improve its performance. The benefit of IT investment can't be captured only by acquiring information technology, but rather by taking effective measures to promote users to accept and use the technology.The problem of how to improve the degree of user acceptance and usage of information technology has become a theme which attracts much attention in IS field. Since it is proposed, most literature has emphasized analysis on user adoption and acceptance from an individual perspective, which tries to explain the attitude and behavior of adopter. Great fruit has been gained by studies of this aspect, the most representative theories and models are innovation diffusion theory, theory of reasoned action, technology acceptance model, theory of planned behavior and so on, which have received widespread validation for many technological innovations where individual autonomy is permitted to adopt or reject a technology, and can explain the reasons of individual acceptance or rejection of information technology. However, more and more evidences have shown that there is a gap between the hypothesis of individual autonomy underlying these theories and the realities of implementing information technology within organizations. For an enterprise, the adoption decision of a technology is often made at organizational level rather than at individual level. Therefore, an organization-level framework is needed to understand technology adoption and implementation at one firm.There is a growing literature stream focusing on process models and stage research models for understanding organizational implementation of technologies. Such models are valuable in describing how implementation processes unfold and identifying the events and outcomes of the processes. Research on this aspect mainly view IT/IS implementation from organizational diffusion and change management perspectives, the most respective fruit are Rogers's process model of organizational innovation and IT/IS implementation model proposed by Kwon and Zumd. However, they limit themselves to research on static models and lack comprehensive and systematic analysis on the processes of technology adoption and acceptance and influential factors along with the events. Therefore, they couldn't capture the complex and dynamic characteristic of the processes of technology adoption and acceptance within organizations, and couldn't provide appropriate instructions for organizational practice of IT/IS construction.Viewed from an organizational perspective, IT/IS implementation is not only a technological process, but also a complexly social process, a behavior evolvement process and a systematic process. In detail, viewed from an organizational behavior perspective, it is a process of organizations to identify, to adopt, to accept and to apply information technology, which is called IT absorption. This thesis explains the problem of how to promote user to adopt and accept information technology from a capacity perspective, and argues that it is the capacities embedded in this process that determine the extent to which IT can be effectively absorbed and applied by the enterprise. Then, this thesis proposes the concept of IT absorptive capacity and argues that it is a precondition and guarantee of effective absorption of information technology. Any problem in IT/IS construction can be attributed to absorption process and absorptive capacity. It is just the distinction of absorptive capacity that causes the difference of the outcomes of IT/IS construction.It makes a challenge to organizational capacities of adoption and acceptance that how to carry out IT implementation and promote organizational absorption and infusion of information technology. In order to realize successful application of information technology, it is necessary to make a further analysis on the factors which influence the process of IT absorption and how they act on absorptive capacity. Therefore, researchers should study the action mechanism of various factors on IT absorptive capacity standing on the point of system thinking and find out the key factors which promote IT absorption while taking the influence of all kinds of endogenous and exogenous factors into consideration.This thesis develops a dynamic process model of IT absorption at organizational level based on a literature review on the theories and models of technology acceptance. It shows that IT absorption is a circulatory and spiral process composed of five stages, viz. identification, adoption, adaptation, acceptance and infusion, and it integrates a role of"knowledge base"into these five stages. Then this thesis proposes the conception of IT absorptive capacity and further analyzes its connotation based on the process model. It divides absorptive capacity into six forms, viz. identification capacity, adoption capacity, adaptation capacity, acceptance capacity, infusion capacity and knowledge management capacity, and discusses the factors and disabilities which influence them. The method of system thinking is used to develop a conceptual model of IT absorptive capacity, which analyzes the evolution of absorptive capacity, the interaction of the capacity of each stage, and the action mechanism of the influential factors. Based on this analysis, five kinds of core competence for IT absorption are summarized, including leadership, corporate culture, organizational learning, change management and knowledge management. Then the thesis develops a framework of the core competence of IT absorption which describes the structure of IT absorptive capacity and the core competence. Following a further analysis on the connotations and functions of the core competence, five hypotheses are proposed and an empirical study is conducted to verify them. The result of data analysis validated that all the five kinds of core competence positively influence IT absorptive capacity. Through a case study, this thesis analyzes IT absorption process of the target enterprise, and then it establishes an evaluation system for IT absorptive capacity and adopts the method of fuzzy synthetic evaluation to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the six forms of capacities for absorption process and the whole absorptive capacity of the enterprise. Finally, some suggestions are proposed for improving its absorptive capacity.A relatively systematic theory has been formed in this thesis, which supplements research on the field of technology acceptance because there isn't any specialized study on IT absorptive capacity in existing literature. Meanwhile, the research fruit of this thesis can be used to provide beneficial reference to the practice work of IT/IS construction for enterprises.